


purest element

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Car Sex, Dom Skye | Daisy Johnson, Dry Humping, F/M, Flirting, Mentions of Daisy/Lincoln, Oral Sex, Phil just really likes getting on his knees, Season 1, daisy knows that phil coulson is a baby deer, mentions of Coulson/Rosalind, otherwise canon-compliant non-canon sexual relationship, parallels between Coulson/Rosalind and Coulson/Daisy, sorta - Freeform, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:14:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sort of a season one 'what if' fic -- Skye and Coulson started a brief canon-compliant sexual relationship in early season one, and it's really just excuses for a lot of porn. (I mean, they got super intense pretty quickly, okay, here's just a little more...explosion to it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. strangeness & charm

“Let me buy you lunch,” Agent Coulson suggests when he's done debriefing his team and they've all sort of wandered away. It leaves the two them standing side by side at the super fancy techno table.

He’s nice and clearly principled and kind of _charming_ , and she’s weirdly comfortable standing next to him.

Then he smiles at her and it's just _beyond_ charming. It's almost hard, thinking about using him for information. It would be so much easier if he were a narcissistic wannabe-emotionless T-1000 like Agent Ward.

“Yeah,” she smiles at him, “I'd like that.”

Honestly, she wonders if she could just ask him to help her. Like, Agent Coulson seems like the kind of man who might just help her, who won't necessarily be bound by the rules and secrets of SHIELD.

But then, she's only known him a day and it would be stupid to blow her chance here based on a feeling that _maybe_ he'd be cool about it.

It’s probably not very professional for a spy to be wondering if maybe she can trust the man whose organization she’s trying to infiltrate.

But Skye isn’t a spy.

She’s a hacker.

She’s a hacker and she’s playing this all by ear because normally when she's infiltrating large organizations, she's doing it anonymously and from hundreds, thousands of miles away. It feels so much more real when it's her flesh and blood on the line.

And when there’s no algorithm that will get her where she needs to be.

She still doesn't exactly know what she's hoping for. He seems like he _might_ consider inviting her on board on a more permanent basis – that's the ideal. She knows that SHIELD hires consultants, and she knows that she can make herself useful. She knows that Agent Coulson has seen how useful she can be.

But the way he's smiling at her, she’s almost scared that he’s thinking of something...different.

And no, for the record, she wouldn’t just sleep with someone for information — not even to satisfy her lifelong quest to find out who she is.

That won’t stop her from flirting back, though. He’s charming, after all, and kind of cute.

“Could you take me by my van first? I've sort of been in these clothes for two days now.” Plus, he's changed clothes, too, so it only seems fair.

His eyes scan down her body, and he nods as he opens her door.

“No problem. Then there's one other loose end we need to tie up.”

“What's that?”

“Ace Peterson,” he informs her, and Skye's eyebrows draw together, a little terrified for a moment about what _tying up_ that loose end might mean. “He has an aunt not far from here. Mike is saying goodbye at the SHIELD base, and then we'll drop him off.

“That's good,” Skye sighs, glad that she hasn't horribly misread Agent Coulson, glad that he really does seem to care about people.

They climb into his car — this car he’s obviously really proud of — and she can’t help but watch him as he maneuvers them out of the loading dock of the plane.

“So how did you come by the name 'Skye,' anyways?” He asks, conversational and not confrontational (not like Douchey Mc'that's not your real name'), as they drive down off the plane's ramp and speed towards what she assumes is the direction of her van.

“I gave it to myself.”

“I had figured that much,” he replies, but doesn’t press harder. “No last name?”

“No family to give me a last name.”

She’s probably telling him more than she should with that. But if her goal here is to play it by ear, she knows the safest thing is to stick as close to the truth as possible, to not get caught in any stupid lies.

Besides, Agent Coulson seems like someone she could actually talk to, given half a chance.

“Do you realize there are no records of you going back further than the last three years, and most of those are of an online presence?”

“That's sort of the way I planned things, yes,” Skye answers.

“It's very impressive.”

“Impressive?”

“To make yourself disappear so completely. Not many people could do that in a way that could beat SHIELD's computers.”

“Well, you should know that I'm, like, _really_ good,” she tells him, and she's not sure if she's flirting or impressing him with her potential professional skills or both.

It's probably both.

“Noted,” he replies as he shoots her this _smile_ with a raised eyebrow, and it makes her stomach twist because SHIELD Agents aren't supposed to be hot and sweet and flirty and impressed by her. Or at least, if they are, it's supposed to be an act – all empty swagger without the kind eyes behind it.

Then he presses down on the gas as they get out further from the airfield, and it gets too loud to talk.

 

* * *

 

“I'll just be a minute,” she promises as she climbs out of the car. It's unexpected when Agent Coulson follows suit, but he does sort of strike her as the type of man who stands from his seat when a woman leaves the room and who always walks a woman to her door. Even when her door is on a van.

Not that this is a _date_ or something. She thinks. Except he _did_ offer to buy her lunch and, well...

He nods and stands just outside the sliding door, like her own private security or something, in his suit with those sunglasses.

Of course, he's a lot more gentle – a lot more unorthodox – than the suit and the sunglasses suggest. She kind of likes it, the paradox of Agent Coulson.

Once in her van, she strips down and runs a baby wipe under her arms and between her legs (yeah, you get pretty good at makeshift baths when you live in a van) and brushes some baby powder through her hair before pulling on new underwear.

Skye pauses for a moment as she's holding a fresh pair of jeans, though. (Relatively fresh, anyways. Yeah, sue her.)

Instead of trading out for another outfit like the one she's got on – the kind of thing that's actually what she wears every day – she pulls on a red dress that she's only ever worn twice. Because Agent Coulson is taking her to lunch, and he’s wearing a suit, and he's not bad looking, and he's a bit of a flirt and…

Well, if she's trying to get inside of SHIELD, it can't hurt to use everything at her disposal.

When she steps out of the the van in her dress and her high boots, Agent Coulson's reaction is sort of a clear indication that she's made the right call. He looks her over, probably more obviously than he means to, and Skye dips her gaze down, pretending that she doesn’t know what he’s doing.

(It would be easier to pretend like she doesn't know what he's doing if his pants weren't quite so tight, though. Because the longer he looks, the clearer it becomes that _holy hell_ , the man needs a tailor that can better contain...him.)

Skye blushes and looks back up at him, and that's the exact moment when she just...forgets that she has a mission here.

Agent Coulson, though, seems to do the opposite. He gathers himself and smiles at her – a more rote, robotic kind of smile – and guides her to the car with a hand that hovers above her waist without touching.

“There's a nice little bistro with a patio not far from the SHIELD facility where Mr. Peterson will be staying. I thought we'd have lunch and chat before we drop off Ace.”

“What are we supposed to chat about?”

“I thought maybe you'd be interested in coming aboard with my team,” he tells her, and it brings Skye up short because she's been prepared to butter him up, to flirt her way on board and he's, what, just going to drop this in her lap?

She's silent during the drive, and it's not because she's trying to figure out what to do – although she's guessing that's what Agent Coulson thinks. Skye doesn't believe in fate or in some 'meant to be' bullshit, but she can't shake this feeling that meeting him right now is big. Important.

And she's a little afraid that if she gets too close to him, she's just going to tell him _everything_. Especially because it doesn’t seem so dangerous to tell him everything.

Which, she’s new to this game, but she thinks that in itself is dangerous.

“Why do you want me?” She asks the question when they're seated at a nice little patio cafe. The kind with tablecloths and flowers and bottles of mineral water. This is _so_ not her scene, but he seems completely at home, so she tries to fake it.

“You know exactly why I want you,” Agent Coulson counters. “Mr. Peterson, his son, and a station full of people would be dead if not for you. You're clearly talented and you know right from wrong.”

“What makes you think that? I know Agent Ward must seriously disagree.”

“He does. So does Agent May.”

“And you're going to risk the anger of your most senior agents on me?”

“They haven't listened to your podcasts.”

“And you have.” She tries not to smile, but she can't help it.

“I have,” he agrees, nods and looks maybe a little sheepish about it.

“So, like, how many of my podcasts are we talking about? Just a few, or are you, like, a fan?”

Agent Coulson smiles, lips closed like he’s trying not to smile at all, and his whole face is soft for a moment before he masters himself.

“I do my research.”

It sends a pang of fear through her for half a heartbeat – the idea that Agent Coulson might _know_ what she's doing, might be playing her right back. But no, he specifically mentioned that he could find nothing on her.

“And what do you think of my podcasts, then?”

He smiles at her – not the closed off smile or the standard-issue SHIELD robot smile, either, but the one that reminds her that there's a guy under there. His sunglasses come off, tucked into his jacket pocket, and their eyes meet from across the tiny table.

Agent Coulson's eyes, it turns out, are completely gorgeous. Like, every color at once and so intense but soft at the same time.

“I think you're smart and principled, and you make a lot of good points.”

“...but?”

“But sometimes there are secrets that work to protect people.”

“And who gets to decide which is which?”

“That’s a fair question. I’m not saying I have the answer, but the answer _can’t_ be a group like the Rising Tide releasing _everything_ to anyone who wants to see it.”

“Because that can hurt people”

“It can, and it has. Did Agent Ward explain to you why it is that he holds a grudge against the Rising Tide?”

“No, not really.”

She frowns because she doesn’t really want to feel a lot of sympathy for Agent Robot, and especially not at the expense of her colleagues.

“He was on a mission, retrieving a dangerous alien artifact, and a Rising Tide leak led to a lot of very bad people closing in on something that would have been sold to the highest bidder and weaponized.”

Skye swallows and looks down at the table.

“No one in the Rising Tide would purposefully —”

“I understand that,” he cuts her off. “I do. All I'm asking you to see is that sometimes SHIELD's methods have a good reason. We're...we're trying to help.”

“I understand that.”

Which she does. Admittedly, she's not ready to throw a celebration of SHIELD right now, but any organization that would make Agent Coulson a high up operative can't be so bad.

“So you'll think about it.”

“Yeah, I will.”

It's funny because she _is_ thinking about it. Not whether she'll say yes – she's going to say yes because, duh, _that is the plan_ – but whether he has a real point here. Whether...whether she's actually wrong about SHIELD.

And then Agent Coulson smiles at her, and she forgets all about thinking about SHIELD.

“So what did you get out of Agent Ward, besides that he wants to see Paris and isn't my biggest fan?”

Skye smiles back and leans forward on her elbows, getting way too chummy with him, but it turns out that it’s really hard not to.

“You're asking me to divulge what secrets I've learned about SHIELD?”

“I already know them all,” he points out, raising a playful eyebrow at her.

Skye laughs in response and thinks back to her time with Agent Ward.

“He said he was calling to mind his training, and told me a lot about his grandmother. Is that the tactic you learn?”

“Spill the truth on inconsequential details until you can control yourself?” He nods. “Yes. It's a distraction technique more than anything.”

“I don't think he knew what I wanted to know about SHIELD anyways.”

“And what's that?”

“What happened during the Battle of New York?”

“Aliens attacked,” he tells her. “A team of superheroes saved us. You know this already.”

“Yeah, but SHIELD wasn't innocent. Was it?”

Agent Coulson narrows his eyes at her and swallows.

“No, perhaps we weren't. We were meddling with potential alien weapons technology, but even if we hadn’t been, the attack still would have happened in some way.”

Skye nods. She probably shouldn’t, but she believes him, believes that he would be honest with her.

“What are your regrets about SHIELD?”

“Regrets?”

“Yeah, you know. What you would change. What you wish was different.”

“The secrecy,” he tells her, and he goes somewhere in his head for a minute.

“I thought some secrets were good?”

“They are. And some are...”

“Not?”

“It's easy sometimes to feel that people are making mistakes – that they're getting it wrong, keeping things from you for reasons that aren't noble.”

Their eyes meet over the table, and Skye feels such a ridiculously strong kinship with this man. Like, this middle class, middle-aged government man in a suit, and that's _weird_ , but it also feels really good to sort of bask in it.

His eyes are still gorgeous, and when he looks at her she feels like he's seeing deep inside of her, like he feels the same kinship.

Lunch arrives, interrupting a quiet moment between them, and the air turns a little awkward as they bite into their panini sandwiches.

It's strange to feel a kinship with this man while also not being sure what to even say to him to break a silence. Because whatever stuff might be between them, they’re also strangers who clearly have had very different lives.

“When did you join SHIELD?” She asks him right as he asks:

“How long were you living in LA?”

They pause and look at each other, each gesturing for the other to answer first, before Skye finally does.

“Almost two years.”

“Were you living in your van that whole time?”

“You first,” she requests, raising an eyebrow at his attempt to dodge her question.

“I had just been accepted into college, and SHIELD made a more interesting offer.” She's guessing that means he's been with SHIELD for over twenty years. Probably less than thirty. Probably around as long as she's been alive.

Because that’s not weird.

“Yes,” she answers his question. “I moved to LA around the time I got the van. Tell me about your family.”

“All my family has passed,” he answers. “Where did you live before LA?”

“Texas.”

Skye pauses and rolls her eyes at this – question and answer as weapons or something.

“If I'm going to move onto your plane, I'd like to feel like I know you better.”

Agent Coulson raises an eyebrow at her, but he looks sort of adorably amused.

“If you're going to be living on my plane, I'd like to feel like I know _you_ better.”

“Too late for that, though. You've already invited me. Now's the part where you butter me up to convince me to come with you.”

“Do you need a lot of buttering, then?”

Skye laughs and rests her chin on her hand.

“Couldn't hurt.”

His mouth twitches, like he’s trying to stop himself from grinning, and his eyes dance.

“What do you want to know?”

She tilts her head, putting on a show of considering him very carefully.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” The lack of wedding band seems to indicate he definitely doesn't have a wife.

It's meant to be a flirty question, but his face goes pensive.

“No,” he finally answers.

“Complicated?”

“That’s an understatement,” he replies, shaking his head. “Sometimes things end in a way where...they don’t.”

“Where you always know that if you saw them again, you'd want to pick back up where you left off?”

“Maybe,” he sort of agrees.

Skye still thinks about Miles a lot, though it's probably less complicated than whatever thing is in Agent Coulson's past. But yeah, she and Miles didn't exactly _end it_ , it's just that she left and they agreed they weren't going to wait for each other. At the same time, though, if he showed up right now...

Well, if he showed up right now, Skye would probably feel a little bad for flirting with the suit.

Awkward silence settles over them again.

“Sorry,” he tells her. “I didn't mean to --”

“It's fine. Sometimes things are complicated.”

“No, I don't have a girlfriend. It's hard to date when you can't tell them about your work.”

“Sounds like a potential comedy of errors.”

He smiles at that, but shakes his head.

“Not with Audrey. She knew a little bit – I met her while I was working a case – but generally, yes.” There’s a moment of silence where he considers her closely. “And you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No,” she replies. “We ended things when I moved to LA.”

“Two years ago?”

“I’ve been busy.”

His eyes are so intense on hers again that she half-thinks he’s about to proposition her. It doesn’t come, though; instead, he seems to rein himself in.

“You said you didn’t have family to give you a last name…”

He trails off, like he doesn’t want to actually ask her a specific question, like he wants to just open up the topic and see what she has to say.

“I was in the system until I was sixteen.”

“And then you learned to hack and erased yourself.”

“Pretty much.”

Agent Coulson swallows and keeps looking at her, and she doesn’t even get it — that look. Like he’s impressed and amused and worried and charmed, and it’s not a look she’s ever seen directed her way before.

Skye clears her throat and looks down at her empty plate. For all the high price tags and quality ingredients, she hadn’t particularly noticed her food at all.

“So, if I come aboard, does that make you my boss?” 

"Yes and no,” Agent Coulson responds. “You’d be joining as a consultant, not an agent. So you would report to me, but be an independent contractor.”

“Good,” she agrees, though he frowns in response.

“You’re worried about what kind of boss I’d be?”

He looks so _earnestly_ upset that she might think him a bad boss that it actually brings her up short. Like, if he can be that concerned, he can’t have been flirting as hard and _unprofessionally_ as she thinks he has been.

She’s spared from having to explain herself by their waiter, though, dropping off a check.

“We should pick up Ace,” he tells her, pushing back from the table. “We may have to squish a little.”

“He can ride on my lap,” Skye offers, earning her a smile. Given that May had driven her in a large black SUV, she’s very aware of the fact that Agent Coulson made a vehicle choice for reasons _other_ than doing what was most expedient or obvious.

“Sounds good,” he grins at her, and leads the way to his ridiculous car.

She kind of likes it.

 


	2. hydrogen in our veins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After 1x02

Her heart sinks through the floor when Miles texts her.

She doesn't want to admit to herself that she's thinking of this place and these people – of Coulson – as something more than an operation, but she is. Like, she really _really_ is, and it's only been one freaking day.

They watch the rocket take off, safely delivering an evil Nazi weapon to a fiery end out of human hands, and she hangs back – watching the team more than the rocket. She likes them all, it turns out. Like, Agent May the secret badass and Agent Ward the secret softy and Agents Fitz and Simmons the not-secret-at-all geniuses. They're nice, and they listened to what she had to say. Mostly.

They don’t believe in her like Coulson does, but they’d been willing to see her as part of their team, and that’s been nice. Really nice.

And Coulson.

Well.

He turns away from his team while they're still drinking, and she follows him up to his office just because. Even though he doesn't acknowledge her directly, she can tell he's very aware of her presence as he stands straighter and possibly flexes his ass.

Or it could just be that she's staring too closely at his ass.

“Did you want to talk about something, Skye?”

His voice is gentle as they walk through the half-destroyed plane and into his office. She sort of expects him to be a little furious with her — he brings her on board for a day, and she suggests blowing a hole in his plane.

(And, god, she remembers getting kicked out of a home for breaking a _decanter_ , so the way he’d smiled at her today had been...amazing.)

There’s really not anything she wants to talk about. Staying close to him feels more like second nature than like something she _intends_ to do, and it makes her blush.

“No, I’m sorry,” she shakes her head and pulls back towards his door. “I’ll leave you alone, I’m sure —”

“Skye,” he cuts her off with a gentle hand on her elbow. “I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t mind you making yourself at home here.”

“You don’t?”

He seems like a private man, really. Like someone who likes to have his own space and his own stuff, like someone who doesn’t like other people touching his stuff.

He had instructed Reyes’s soldiers not to touch Lola, had taken care to rub off fingerprints on her paint.

But then, he hadn’t chastised her for touching.

“Come in,” he directs her to the couch along his back wall and walks to a bar hidden in one of his cases. “You want a drink?”

“What do you have?”

“Bourbon,” he answers with a shrug.

“Sure.” Skye leans back on his couch and watches as he pours. “Why do you need a bar up here?”

“We’re new to this, as you pointed out today. I don’t think it’s a good idea to socialize with the rest of the team like this until I get to know them better.”

“So I don’t count as the team?”

He looks up at her, surprised.

“No, you do. I just thought that we already know each other better.”

Skye nods and takes the glass from him when he offers it, unable to stop a grin from pulling at her mouth.

“But you and May go back, don’t you?”

“Yes. Since we were at the Academy. We’ve...drifted apart, though.”

“And everyone else you’ve only just met.”

“Right.”

She smiles, liking the idea that she’s special. Liking the idea that no one else on the team is going to come up to his office and sit on his couch and drink his bourbon. She likes it even more when he sits down on the couch beside her, his arm slung along the back behind her head.

If she didn’t know better, she would think he was totally putting the moves on her.

And, well, she _doesn’t_ know better.

“So, when you and Comandante Reyes did...whatever classified things you did...were you breaking some sort of protocol?”

“Not officially, no.” Coulson raises an eyebrow at her, and Skye looks at him from under her eyelashes as she holds her glass to her nose. “Why are you asking?”

“I'm just trying to figure out whether those kinds of things are frowned upon between a SHIELD agent and a _consultant_.”

“Those kinds of things?”

“ _Classified_ things.”

Coulson smiles, and she swears he looks almost relieved.

“Not breaking protocol, no. But still frowned upon.”

“You seem like the kind of man who doesn't mind doing things that are frowned upon.”

He smirks at that.

“You seem like the kind of woman who _enjoys_ doing things that are frowned upon.”

“Well, lots of things that are frowned upon are fun to do.”  

Their eyes lock for a long moment, and she shivers when his gaze drifts down to her lips.

“If I kiss you right now, you’re not going to kick me off the Bus, are you?”

“No,” he answers, and grabs her glass from out of her hand so he can set them both down on a nearby table. He draws closer to her, close enough that she can feel his breath on her lips, but nothing happens.

“You gonna kiss me, Coulson?”

He swallows and pulls back.

“This might be a really bad idea,” he tells her. “I’d like for you to stay around on a more long-term basis. Maybe get some combat training.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course.”

Skye pulls back and meets his eyes.

“Why?”

“Because you were lying about not being a team player. You’re the only one here who actually knows how to be a team player. You have good ideas and you’re not afraid to express them.”

“So you think I matter that much?”

“I know that my team might not have figured out how to survive today without you.”

“Do you know that you might not have had a hole blown in the side of your plane without me?”

“Skye.” He shakes his head. “I don’t care about that. I care that we all made it.”

“Oh.” He’s so sweet and earnest, and it makes her eyes sort of sting. “You’ve known me for a day,” Skye tells him. “Like, literally a day. How can you care about me so much?”

“Because you don’t care at all?”

She shakes her head, eyes pointed down at her lap, and feels another stab of guilt. But then, the fact that she has an agenda doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care. She does care. Too much.

“Yeah.”

And _fuck_ , but she’s going to start crying.

“Skye,” he calls her name in a whisper, and his hand lands softly on her shoulder.

It feels like she has two choices right then — to tell him _absolutely everything_ or to kiss him and push it all down.

She takes the coward’s way out.

He gasps when her mouth closes over his, so she catches his lower lip immediately between hers. Coulson’s lips stay frozen under hers, but his harsh breaths give him away. All it takes is her tongue brushing across his lower lip, and he gives in with a deep groan.

“You don’t have to do this,” he tells her as he kisses her, lips moving hard over hers while his hand slides up the back of her head and into her hair.

“I know,” she promises.

“You’re in charge here, I mean it.”

Skye pulls back and smirks at him.

“How in charge?”

Coulson blinks in obvious surprise and then she swears she can see his pupils dilate, see the way his whole body heats up as he watches her.

“Oh, you mean you want me _very_ in charge, huh?”

Just the look on his face makes her lower body clench, and yeah, telling her she can be in charge is probably a dangerous proposition.

“Skye,” Coulson whispers her name as she swings a leg over his lap, and then he dissolves into an incoherent groan when she grinds herself down on top of him. His hands settle on her hips, but she quickly grasps them and draws his arms out across the back of the couch. He gamely stretches himself out for her and grabs hold of the back of the couch, leaving himself spread out and vulnerable to her touch.

She begins by running her hands down the center of chest, over his tie, feeling the firmness of him under her fingers. Slowly, she lets them crawl back up to his neck, where she hooks her index finger into his tie.

“I never realized suits were kind of hot before,” she tells him, voice low and promising, and he visibly shudders at the words.

Using her grip on his tie as leverage, she tugs him into another kiss, hard and fast before she sits back on his thighs.

“Take off your jacket.”

“I thought suits were hot,” he counters.

“At least part of the hotness is the idea of getting you _out_ of them.”

He looks almost startled at that, and then he swallows and complies, removing his arms from along the back of the couch only long enough to tug it off and toss it over the arm.

She takes her time feeling out the planes of his chest, pausing occasionally to reel him into a fast kiss as she works her fingers lower, until she’s hooked her fingers into the edges of his belt near his hips.

As her hands slide back around to the front, bringing her fingers almost against his groin, Coulson leans up and kisses her, craning his neck to fit his mouth against hers as firmly as he can. She loses focus on getting her hands on him as she meets his tongue with hers, and in her peripheral vision she can see his hands tighten harder on the back of the couch, knuckles turning white under the strength of his grip.

Skye pulls back and gasps in a breath, only to feel Coulson’s tongue chase after hers, flicking over her lower lip before he gets his mouth back against hers.

“I want to touch you,” he grunts into her mouth, pushing his hips up against her sort of desperately.

“Yeah —”

She’s barely finished the word when he’s got one hand on the back of her head and the other pressing a firm line down her spine, forcing her to grind harder down against him. The seam of her jeans presses against her clit, adding to the pressure of him hard underneath her, and she can hear the friction between the denim and his slacks.

Coulson’s hand slides almost to her butt and then he grunts harshly:

“God, yes, Skye.”

She moans back against his lips as her hips begin to work against him faster, finding a rhythm that builds heat between her legs.

When she pulls her lips away from his, Coulson buries his face against the side of her neck, kissing a wet trail down from her ear that leaves her shaking.

“Shit,” she whispers as she feels the first clenching spasm deep inside her, feels all the air pushed out of her lungs in a harsh breath. “I’m —”

“Uh huh,” Coulson agrees into her neck and keeps moving his hips against her, keeps the constant grinding pressure between them while his hands stroke across her body.

She comes against him, losing any sense of rhythm as she collapses forward into his chest. He’s still hard underneath her, still panting against the top of her head where it’s nuzzled under his chin, but his hand on her back becomes soft and undemanding.

“I haven’t done that since I was a teenager,” Coulson murmurs against her hair.

“Dry humped on the couch?”

“Hmm,” he answers, sounding much less shocked than she had imagined he would.

“We’re not done,” Skye points out, grinding her hips against the obvious bulge underneath her.

He opens his mouth like he might disagree, like he might fight it, but then he groans against the slow thrust of her hips.

“ _Skye_ ,” he moans, the sound of which becomes a grunt of displeasure when she pulls back, and then a gasp when slips down to the floor. “Oh, fuck.”

Coulson is silent as she pries apart his belt and then opens his pants; he helps her slide them down his thighs just enough to expose the length of his cock, which stands rigid and pale pink against the pooled fabric of his shirt.

His hand lands on her face, thumb dragging over her cheekbone as his fingers drift down under her jaw.

Skye freezes while he touches her, and their eyes meet as his thumb slips from her cheek down to brush against her lower lip. She lets her mouth fall partly open, and welcomes it when his thumb pushes inside to brush against her tongue. Slowly, she closes her lips around his thumb and sucks, increasing pressure around his digit until he groans.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Well, _duh_ , she raises an eyebrow at him.

He seems to get it, to hear the answer she’s not saying, and nods once before dropping his hand away from her, and she can see the way his whole body almost vibrates.

As soon as he pulls his hand away from her face, she wraps her right hand around the base of his cock and brings it to brush against her cheek. She runs her nose down the length of him, breathing in the scent of Agent Coulson as he pants for breath above her.

Skye hasn’t done this in such a long time that she feels a little clumsy, but Coulson already seems to be losing it above her, moaning at the barest touches of her nose to his cock, and his hand shakes as he touches her again — just a soft brush against her cheek.

She leans into it for a moment before pulling back and looking up into his eyes.

“Put your hands back,” she orders him. He complies, stretching his arms across the back of the couch again as she breathes hot air against him.

“Skye,” he whispers her name, but the quiet enunciation devolves into a groan when she opens her mouth and sucks the head inside.

She hums against him as she bobs her head down, slowly taking more of him into her mouth and working her tongue against the underside.

“Skye,” Coulson grunts her name again, “not gonna last.”

Skye nods and sinks her mouth further down his shaft, keeping her lips tight around him. He’s loud — sort of surprisingly loud, actually — and she figures it’s a good thing this won’t take long because he probably doesn’t want the rest of the team to hear him like this.

“Shit,” he grunts progressively filthier words as she moves her mouth over him. “ _Fuck_.”

And she had figured out pretty quickly that Coulson isn’t nearly as buttoned up as he pretends to be, but it’s still thrilling to see him coming apart like this. It makes her shake with her own desire, makes wet arousal pool between her legs.

She moves her lips faster over him, increases suction, and pumps her hand at the base, bringing him quickly over the edge. His head drops backwards, so she can see the tension in his throat as his mouth falls open, a silent yell as he comes.

He gasps in a breath, his whole body arching on the couch.

“God,” he whispers, and she wants to make a joke — like, _nah, it’s just Skye_ — when he looks down and meets her eyes. “ _Skye_.”

Something in the way he says her name, like it means something to him, makes her stomach twist, more than arousal — although, yeah, her whole lower body feels almost painfully tight, too.

“Come here,” he requests, still sprawled out above her, so she climbs up on the couch with him, and is surprised when he kisses her immediately, open mouthed and tongue pressing against hers. Like not only does he not mind the taste of himself, but he likes it.

“Skye,” he whispers into her mouth again, this tenderness that he can’t possibly feel for her.

They break apart when the sound of the loading bay closing makes it clear that everyone is coming back inside, back onto the plane. She groans in frustration and squeezes her thighs together.

His smirk is a little insufferable, and also kind of cute.

“If you want to come back up here later, you can,” he invites her, like he’s being extra careful with this whole ‘you don’t have to’ thing. And she gets it, she appreciates it, but she also gets him pretty well, she thinks, and the idea that he would take advantage in some way is so far from her mind.

“I will,” she promises him, but pulls back, gives him room to cover himself.

Coulson tucks himself back into his slacks and re-dresses, gets himself back to this put-together _guy_ , and then grins at her.

“Hungry?”

“Yeah.”

Skye swallows, and follows him out of the room, trying to look like something approximating normal.

 

* * *

 

She does come back up, after everyone is closed in their bunks, where they’ve chosen to stay instead of checking into a hotel. The bunks are in decent shape, anyways, and a crew already cleaned up all the bits of glass.

She’s slipped into a pair of SHIELD issued sweats and a tshirt that seem to come standard issue — apparently SHIELD likes to brand themselves, if these and the bottle of water she’d had earlier mean anything — but she’s barefoot as she she pads up the stairs.

At his door, she hesitates.

This is a bad, bad idea, getting close to him like this.

When she knocks, she’s definitely not thinking with her brain, but rather with the persistent ache that twists between her legs, that flares every time she thinks about him.  

He’s in matching sweats when he opens the door, and he looks just as terrified as she is. Maybe more terrified.

It’s sort of funny, she supposes, that they both know this is a horrible idea, but they have completely different reasons for knowing why.

Skye lunges at him first, spares him the embarrassment of having to prevaricate, and she thinks he’s grateful for that.

His mouth is warm against hers, still minty from toothpaste, and even as he lets her control the kiss, he’s so _eager_ , quick to let her in his mouth, to let her run her hands down his body.

For an older guy, he’s got a really nice body, and it’s the first time the _older guy_ part really hits her. Or at least it starts to, when Coulson pulls back, his lips pink and full.

“Do you still want…” He looks suddenly bashful, like an awkward boy, as his tongue darts across his lower lip.

“ _Yes_ ,” she agrees.

“You don’t even know what I was offering.”

“You were offering to go down on me,” she fills in.

She uses bluntness, faking a comfort level with talking about sex that she doesn’t really have, in hopes of seeing him blush again, in hopes of knocking him off balance, but he only looks more turned on by her words.

“My bed,” he whispers, and tugs her backwards around a partition wall and into a pretty decent sleeping quarters.

“Swanky,” she teases, looking around.  

“There are benefits to being the boss,” he suggests.

“And benefits to sleeping with the boss?”

There’s that shadow of doubt — the one that says he can’t shake the idea that he’s doing something wrong, maybe taking advantage of her, which is _almost_ funny. But then he buries it under a falsely easy smile.

“Take off your pants and I’ll show you.”

It startles a laugh out of her, enough that it covers for her initial embarrassment at the thought of dropping her sweats. They crumple to her ankles along with her underwear, and she steps out of them.

“You were saying?”

Coulson exhales, a harsh sound, and then sort of just _drops_ to his knees, like he’s been waiting for the excuse.

From his knees, he looks up at her, all eagerness and desire with his lips parted, and she remembers the way he touched her earlier. Slowly, she reaches forward and brushes her thumb across his lower lip, watches as he opens and sucks it gently into his mouth.

“Hmm,” he moans around the digit, taking it deeper and bobbing his lips over it. It’s hotter than it should be, not something she’s ever experienced before, not like this.

“Phil,” she whispers his name, trying it out, and tugs her thumb backwards out of his mouth.

He looks up at her like he’s awaiting instruction, so she sits backward onto the edge of his bed and tugs him forward, giving it to him as she guides his mouth between her thighs.

And it’s not exactly shocking that he’s eager when he opens his mouth and _sucks_ — he’s eager about basically everything.

Still, he devotes himself to the task thoroughly, his hands curling around her thighs to hold her open, and Skye runs her fingers through his hair as she gives herself over to the sensation. It’s intense — almost too intense — heat shooting up her spine that makes her groan and arch her back.

It’s been such a long time for her; her time in LA hasn’t really been about relaxing, about playing, and she’s not met someone she’d been willing to trust like this.

But it’s _good_ , so good to let herself go, even better when his tongue begins to make firm, tight circles against her clit.

“Like that,” she whispers, her throat almost too tight to make noise, her fingers clutching at his hair.

He groans against her, a pleased sound like he’s seriously enjoying himself, and his tongue works somehow harder in response.

She comes with her hand on the back of his head, her hips grinding forward towards his mouth, but he doesn’t stop until she pulls him back, all wet lips and tongue darting after her, like he doesn’t want to stop.

“Skye,” he whispers her name, like he’s amazed by her, his eyes dark and desperate.

With her hand on the back of his neck, she pulls him up onto the bed, guiding him to crawl over her as she slides backwards up towards the headboard. He follows her guidance easily, moving up between her thighs and seeking out her mouth as he stretches. He moans between kisses as she pushes her hands down his sweats, far enough that she can wrap her hand around his cock.

When she pushes her other hand up his shirt, though, to bring it up over his head, he pulls back.

“Could I —”

She remembers what he said earlier — that he was stabbed through the heart — and nods, drawing her hand into his sweats, pushing them down his hips.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathes against her mouth.

And the truth is that she isn’t sure what she wants now, but Coulson makes the decision easy by slipping his hand between her legs and pushing two fingers inside of her as he thrusts into her fist.

He kisses her hard and desperate, the taste of her heady on his tongue as he fucks her with his fingers, as she twists her hand around his cock.

“That’s good,” he mumbles against her lips, and Skye returns it with a moan at the perfect curve of his fingers inside of her.

She’s louder when she comes this time, head thrown back against his pillow, and he comes in her hand, open mouth pressed to her neck.

After, they curl into each other, in their SHIELD shirts but missing their sweats.

And it probably shouldn’t be so surprising, for all that Coulson’s actually pretty sweet, but it feels good to be held and to hold someone back.

She doesn’t sneak back down to her bunk until the early morning hours, just before he tells her May will probably be up, and she leaves him at his door with a series of kisses, too hot for first thing in the morning, before padding down the staircase.


	3. it cannot hold itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mid 1x03

She doesn’t go up to his office for the first night since she officially came on board, almost a week.

It’s been a thing, waiting for everyone to settle in — especially Fitz, who is weirdly proud about being right next door to her — and then sneaking up to Coulson’s office.

It’s the weirdest relationship she’s ever had, although, yeah, her experience with relationships is sort of limited.

But they haven’t actually _fucked_ , which she thinks is probably weird.

Agent Coulson, it turns out, is really really good with his tongue, though. And his fingers. So she doesn’t miss the sex, not really, but she’s pretty sure it’s weird.

So far, they’ve just undressed enough to get each other off and then...cuddled.

Like, he pushes his tongue inside of her and makes her come on his fingers, all without even taking off their shirts, and then he wraps himself around her like she’s _precious_.

It’s surprisingly excellent because Skye has been pretty much starved for touch for the past two  years, and she can tell there’s something weird with Coulson, too, that he’s just as starved, that what she is to him is something he needs every bit as much as she does.

Truthfully, she could probably use _at least_ the cuddling part tonight — after a day of Ward trying to whip her into shape to storm Ian Quinn’s villa — but it feels off. She’s lying, she’s lying to him, and Ward is telling her she has to _commit_.

But...to what is she supposed to commit, exactly?

So instead of going up to his room, she sneaks down into the loading bay. She’s tempted by Lola at first — Coulson’s sexy car — but the lure of the dark quiet back of the SUV is stronger.

It’s nice, dark and quiet and small. She’s never been claustrophobic; small spaces like this one make her feel safe and hidden away.

She’s barely had time to settle in when there’s a tentative knock on the window.

“Hi,” Coulson greets her when he opens the door, looking a little sheepish.

“Hi.”

“I wanted to make sure you’re...okay.”

And if she has an uncharitable thought about what Coulson really wanted, it’s buried by the way he looks at her — all concern. Nothing lecherous or sexual, nothing even flirty, just him being worried about her.

She kind of likes the way he worries about her.

“Yeah,” she answers, forcing a smile, but her voice cracks on the word.

Coulson’s face falls.

“Skye?”

“Did Ward tell you I’m really bad at this?”

He smiles a little and looks down at the empty seat just inside the car door.

“May I?”

“You’re the boss,” she reminds him, scooching a little over into her own seat, but he stays standing, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, Coulson,” she rolls her eyes. “Get in.”

He’s so _careful_ with her, in a way that she swears should be a turnoff because she hates it when people treat her like she’s going to break.

But that’s not how he is at all.

He’s careful in a different way, a way that assumes she knows what she wants, a way that assumes she has the strength to take the lead, a way that’s about giving her the space to do it.

Today, in front of everyone, he smirked at her when she pulled out her phone and dug up an invite to Ian Quinn’s party, and it felt so _good_. It’s not fair that it feels so good that he trusts her, that he looks at her like he just expects that she’s capable of solving a problem.

She wants to live up to it, to the amount that he trusts her, and she tries _so hard_ not to think about why she’s really here and what it will feel like when he finds out.

With the door shut and the loading bay lights off, the back of the SUV is dark and still except for the sound of Coulson beside her.

It’s nice, sitting silently in the near-total darkness with him, the sound of his breath filling the space.

“I told you I joined SHIELD when I was practically just out of high school,” he tells her, his voice soft and low. “I had been studying it. I was fascinated by the way SHIELD had impacted history, by all the ways SHIELD made the world what it is.”

“Conspiracy theory stuff?”

“Some,” he agrees.

“Like what?”

“That’s classified.” His tone is teasing, almost sensual, and it makes her laugh and also slide closer to him.

“You were such a troublemaker, weren’t you?”

Like her, maybe, she thinks. Like maybe he likes her because she reminds him of him, back before he put on a suit.

“Maybe.” She can’t quite see his smile, but she can hear it, can imagine the way his face gets all soft with a playful tilt of his lips, and she wonders when she started to feel like she knows his face so well. “I had a lot of questions; I wasn’t really sure about SHIELD. And then I went on a mission with my SO — Fury. There were hostages, and he had to make a call.”

“Did someone die?”

“No,” he answers, almost a laugh. “No, the call he made was to put down his gun and to talk.”

“Like you did with Mike Peterson.”

“I’m sure Fury looked much cooler when he did it.”

Skye laughs at that and touches his arm, thinks about Coulson setting down his gun, thinks about Coulson believing her that Mike just needed a break.

“And I respect the people who make those decisions,” he continues, “who have shaped history that way. And I realized that I wanted to do that.”

“To make those calls, and choose to put down your gun?”

“Hmm,” he agrees, a quiet hum in the back of his throat, so the timbre of his voice makes the hairs on her neck stand up, makes her shiver, with more than the force of how much he wants to do the right thing.

Sometimes she can’t even believe he’s real.

She fumbles in the darkness, to get into his lap, to fit her hands behind his neck, to draw his lips to hers.

“I’m glad you’re making those calls,” she whispers against his mouth, and it means something for her to say that — she hopes he gets that.

From the way he fits his arms around her and tugs her against him, she thinks he does.

It’s sort of surprising to have a man wrap his arms around her, to feel him pull her against him like Coulson does, without pressing for more, without making it sexual. Instead, he lets himself be kissed, he lets himself hold her as though this that’s all there is.

She’s the one who slips her tongue against his, and he grunts at the sensation, clutches her hips as he kisses her back like he’s amazed it’s happening — and she doesn’t understand how he always seems so _surprised_ , so shocked every time she pushes things.

Skye lets her hands drift down and then back up his chest, feeling out the shape of him under his buttondown. He’s taken off the tie, and she can feel his lack of an undershirt — can feel the warmth of his skin so close to her fingertips. When she gets her hands up to his collar, she pauses and pulls back.

“Can I?” She fiddles with the button at his collar as she asks.

“I’m...it’s ugly,” he warns her. And it’s not a _no_ , but it’s not a _yes_ , either.

“Luckily it’s super dark, Phil,” which she hopes he understands is about his comfort — about how she’s not trying to push him — not how she’s trying to agree that he’s in any way ugly.

He smiles, she can feel it against her lips, and then nods and leans back against the seat, lets her work open his shirt.

Once she’s got it open to the waist — where it’s tucked into his slacks — Coulson shifts and tugs it out of his waistband, and she opens the shirt all the way so she can run her palms from his belly up to his chest. And she can’t see him well — just a vague pale shape in the dark — but she can feel him warm and solid, can feel the dusting of hair over surprisingly soft skin.

He quivers under her fingers, his abdomen shaking as he holds his muscles tight, and by the time she brushes over his nipples, he’s basically vibrating between her legs.

“Shit,” he breathes, “Skye.”

She pauses over his nipples, makes a soft circle around each one with her index fingers, and then drags the back of her fingernails over the hardened nubs. He gasps at the sensation, and his fingers close hard over her hips as he grinds himself up underneath her.

Skye teases him until he’s writhing from it, until he’s gasping for breath and grunting in a way that makes her wonder if she could make him come like this. She doesn’t have much of a chance to wonder, though, before he pushes her back and sucks in a shaky breath as his hands move from her hips up under her shirt.

“May I?”

“Yes,” she answers, impatient suddenly.

Coulson slips off her shirt by running his palms all the way up her torso, and once he’s tossed her tshirt onto the seat beside them, he pulls her forward with a hand on her middle back to get his mouth on her.

His lips wrap around her right nipple, sucking hard as his tongue sets a fluttering pattern behind his lips. Skye groans and leans further into it as the heat of his mouth pulls at her, as his teeth scrape over her with just the slightest pressure, and every touch sends sparks down her back that leave her wet and aching.

While his mouth is occupied at her breasts, Coulson slides his hands down her naked back and under her sweats to cup her ass and then move to the front to press his right fingers between her legs, wrist twisted to get under the elastic band.

Skye is the one who has the prerogative to pull backwards and maneuver herself out of her sweats and panties, leaving her naked and open on his lap.

“Skye,” he whispers her name as he pulls her into a kiss, mouth hungry against hers. “I wish I could see you.”

She pulls back at that and leans back enough that she can run her hand over the SUV roof, pausing when she finds the overhead light.

They both wince as the sudden light invading their darkness, and she’s surprised by the way Coulson doesn’t seem too worried about her seeing his chest; his his eyes locking onto her breasts as his mouth falls open.

While he looks at her, she takes him in for the first time. And he’s not wrong, exactly — the scar on his chest isn’t pretty. It looks painful and scary and she wonders how the fuck he’s even _alive_ , how anyone could ever walk away from an injury that leaves _that_ in its wake — but he’s otherwise perfectly shaped.

And she’s never been with a guy Coulson’s age before, doesn’t really have a good frame of reference for the bodies of men in their forties look like, but she’s pretty sure his is great even compared to younger guys.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” he whispers, drawing her attention back up to his face, and something in his voice says that he thinks she’s too gorgeous for him.

“Coulson,” she whispers his name, and his eyes flicker up to hers briefly before he runs his gaze down her neck. Both of his hands land there, tracing down from her chin so that she has to tilt her head back to give him access to her neck, and then he brushes his thumbs outwards across the lines of her clavicles.

His fingers curve briefly around her shoulders, and down her upper arms, and then he turns his gaze back to her breasts.

He brushes along the outside of her breasts with his index fingers, then up to flick his thumbnails across her nipples, which makes her moan shiver above him. Skye watches his face as he slides his eyes and his fingers down from her breasts, tracing along her ribcage so that her skin erupts in goosebumps.

Coulson’s tongue slips past his lower lip, drawing a wet trail there as his right hand drops lower down her body, circling her belly button and then sliding between her thighs to barely brush her clit.

She moans and tilts her hips towards him, wordlessly begging for more as the center of her throbs with need, but he backs off, runs his hands down her thighs and then back up towards her hips.

His gaze drags back up her torso along with his hands until he’s cupping her breasts, and she regrets the fact that she’s not taken off her shirt before tonight — some kind of ill-conceived show of solidarity with his own preference — because Phil Coulson’s hands on her breasts are _good_.

But she’s too on edge, can’t take a teasing buildup, and works her shaking fingers down to pull open his belt and pants.

“Can we…” She begins to ask breathlessly as her hand curves around his cock. “Do you have...”

“Yes,” he answers, and then he shifts underneath her to reach into his back pocket, to extract his wallet and then a condom from somewhere therein. She watches as he rolls it over his cock, his fingers quick and practiced but still shaking with how much he wants this, too.

She likes that.

And she likes the way that when he helps guide himself into position so she can sink down on top of him, he holds her eyes. His face is partly cast in shadow, but can see the way his blue eyes seem to burn for her.

She likes the way his eyes seem to want to close as he pushes up inside of her, the way he fights to keep looking at her.

It’s been such a long time since she’s done this, since she  _fucked_ someone, since she felt this kind of stretch inside of her, and it’s too much sensation to process until he’s pressed  _all the way_ inside of her.

“Oh, God,” she moans, and he nods, answers with a similar grunt and wraps his arms around her waist, pulls her flush against his chest.

They move slowly together, no rush to this even though she was desperate a moment before, just his cock building sensation inside of her, his open-mouthed gasps against her ear, his hands skating down her back to clutch at her ass.

It’s a slow burn until she can’t take it anymore, until she has to pull back far enough to work her hips harder, faster against him.

When she comes, he’s close enough that he follows almost instantly, his arms wrapped tightly around her and his face in her neck.

Skye collapses forward into him, panting for breath, and he keeps his hands running over her back in ceaseless figure eights.

“That was pretty great,” she whispers near his ear. “I’m glad you came to find me.”

His hands still in the middle of her back.

“You know _this_ isn’t why I came to find you, right?”

“I know you just wanted to make sure I was okay.”

He nods, and his hands start moving again, sliding slowly down her back, cupping her ass, moving back up.

“You have a big mission tomorrow,” he sighs against the top of her head.

“Yeah. I guess I should go to bed, huh.”

They stay tangled up together for longer than they should, though, and she has the unsettling feeling that they both know they’re clinging onto something with an expiration date. 


	4. and the pressure in our bodies that echoes up above

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1x04

She disappears into the SUV because she needs to search through SHIELD’s files — something she’s really been slacking on, what with the socializing and the training and the fucking her maybe-boss — but has a hard time focusing.

She can’t stop thinking about _him_ , how he’s all...good.

And maybe it’s guilt that she’s trying to play someone who is obviously a really good man. Or maybe it’s fear that he won’t forgive her when he finally finds out.

For the millionth time, she thinks about telling him.

It might not even be so bad, she thinks. He might help her.

(He might help her so much he gets himself in trouble. He’d broken the rules for someone he thought might be a murderer, and she wonders what he might do for her, how he might get in trouble for her.)

It might be awful. He might make her leave, might send her back to square one on her search, might take away this place she’s come to enjoy.

(Maybe that would still be better, though, than him getting in trouble for her.)

It might mean losing another home.

And she hates that it’s become about that — about not wanting to disappoint him, not wanting to lose this place. She’s supposed to be smarter than this, smarter than feeling at _home_ in strange places, smarter than _wanting_ to feel at home in strange places.

Partly, she’s too emotional today, to emotional the way she always is on the first day of her period, and she knows it will pass.

But the guilt and the feelings are real — very real, too real.

She tries to push it all aside, tries to focus, as she gets inside the SHIELD system.

When Coulson interrupts her, she wonders if he knows something — if he can tell, if he’s here to play on her guilt and her fear.

But he just smiles, easy and charming, and she wishes she didn’t like him so much.

She’s the worst spy _ever_ , basically.

“Are you still needing your _you time_?”

Because she had begged off game time with Fitz, had asked Ward to leave her alone, had dodged girl talk with Simmons so she could curl up in here. Because she needed to be alone with her thoughts and with her phone, and he’d leave her alone, too, if she asked.

But it’s _him_.

“There’s always room for AC,” she jokes, and gets a raised eyebrow in return. “Slide on in.”

So he does, he comes in the SUV after her, and it was just a week ago that they were in here together, that he was inside her, that she was riding him _right here_.

But it’s daytime now. It’s daytime and there are people around who might have just seen him climb in here with her.

And even if they _were_ going to fuck in the SUV in the middle of the afternoon, it’s off the table today — off the table for the next few days.

She thinks it will probably be slightly awkward, sitting back here with him when they’re not going to do anything like that, but instead he settles in and turns to look at her.

“What’s wrong with ‘Agent Coulson,’ or just ‘Coulson’?”

He’d made a point earlier, when people were watching, to reject _Phil_ , and she gets it — she respects it. People call him Coulson, and she should, too. They never talked about secrecy, it’s been unspoken but obvious, and being careful with names is obviously a part of that.

But she thinks maybe he doesn’t hate the idea of nicknames. Maybe.

And maybe, even if the sex part is secret, she wants it to be common knowledge that whatever her relationship is with him, it’s special. Like a little harmless way to mark him, to make him _hers_.

“Nothing, I guess. AC’s just way cooler.”

He grins at her, this supremely dorky grin, and god she must be a huge dork, too, because she loves it.

“And you are,” she continues. “Cool. Not many people would have made that call to give Amador a second chance.”

It means a lot to her, something she’s clinging to lately.

“I got one,” he tells her. “Seems only fair I extend the same opportunity to others.”

And it’s the hormones, she knows, that make her want to cry. She pushes it down and smiles at him, tries to pretend that they aren’t maybe talking about her, too, about whether she’ll get a second chance when the time comes.

“I see why you like it in here,” he tells her, his voice soft as he relaxes back on the seat.

Because dark back seats are for more than sex, and of course he’d get it.

“Yeah, it’s kind of like my van,” she smiles, because her van was _home_ for years. Besides St. Agnes, it’s the longest she’s ever had one home, the longest she’s ever been somewhere. Even if it wasn’t perfect. “Without all the bums trying to break in. I don’t miss that.”

She wonders, not for the first time, what he sees when he looks at her. What he thinks about when she talks about living in her van.

There’s no judgement in his eyes, though, just a soft smile like he thinks she’s kind of great.

“It’s more peaceful here,” she tells him.” It’s also cool knowing that someone has my back...no matter what.”

“Peaceful’s good,” he replies, his voice soft in the stillness around them.

“Yeah.”

“You…” Coulson draws in a breath. “You’ve never had anyone who would have your back?”

“There are people who I could count on for some things. But never…”

He nods, like he gets it.

“Never someone who you knew would go to the mat for you, no matter what.”

“Is that a SHIELD kind of thing, or a _you_ kind of thing?”

“Second chances? And having each other’s backs?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d like to think it’s a SHIELD thing. That SHIELD is about a group of people standing up for what’s right. Protecting people who need protecting.”

“But it doesn’t always work that way.”

“No,” he admits. “No, it doesn’t seem like it does.”

“You want to make things better than they are.”

And she loves that about him so much, loves how much she thinks he’s like her, how much he obviously wants to make the world better.

Against her better judgement, she grabs his tie and pulls him forward into a fast, hard kiss.

He gives in, kisses back, and looks a little dazed when she lets go of him. After a moment, though, he looks around through the dark tinted windows.

“We can’t —”

“I know. I didn’t mean to.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re just very cute when you want to make the world a better place.”

It makes him smile, his shy smile that makes him look _so young_ , and she can’t stop herself from kissing him again, hand clutched tightly just beneath the knot of his tie.

“Sorry,” she whispers against his mouth, but it’s accompanied by another hard kiss, her tongue flicking against his lower lip.

“I don’t think you’re very sorry,” he manages to mutter against her mouth, but he also kisses her back, lips seeking out hers even as she holds him in place.

“No, I am. I just…”

She sucks in a gasp when Coulson’s hands slide up her belly to cup her breasts, to thumb across her nipples over her top.

“Sorry,” he mocks her, squeezing her nipples so that the sensation zings down her spine and makes her throb.

“Coulson,” she moans his name and thrusts her chest more firmly into his hands as she tugs his tie tighter, forcing his mouth harder against hers.

She kisses him until he’s panting for breath against her lips, until she can’t stand the feeling of his hands on her breasts without pushing for more.

It’s a sound somewhere outside the SUV that finally makes them break apart, though, that makes her release her grip on his tie, and even then she watches him pant for breath with more than a little interest.

“You want to come upstairs?”

Skye looks down into her lap and licks her lips.

“I have… We can’t...you know, for a few days.”

His eyebrows draw together like he’s confused, and then he smirks as he realizes what she means.

“I don’t know whether it’s cuter than you avoided saying _sex_ or _menstruation_.”

“I grew up Catholic,” she defends herself. “It’s not my fault.”

“I’ve heard you say plenty of graphic things,” he points out.

“That’s in the moment. This is...real.”

He looks all _soft_ at that answer, and she’s getting so used to this look. She loves this look, but it makes her gut twist because every time he makes it she wonders if it might be the last.

“Hmmm,” he smiles at her, and he really does have gorgeous eyes. “Sex isn’t a requirement for you coming upstairs, you know.”

She nods once. She does know, really, that Coulson would be nice to her pretty much regardless of what they were doing. It’s one of those really obvious, really annoying, really charming things about him.

He likes her, and he likes cuddling.

“Could we get food first?”

He also makes really good sandwiches.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and opens the door of the SUV to guide her out.

She kisses him one more time before she slides out after him.


	5. it is exploding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1x05

When he hands her the box, she already knows what's in it and it _hurts_.

And Coulson looks so _sad_. She doesn't even know what to do with that as he hands over the box and then leaves the room, as though he can't stand to watch her put it on.

He said he would help her and she believes him; that even if her only goal is still to find out who she is, her best bet is to stay.

But she wants to stay anyways; she already wanted to stay. She wants to stay because Coulson’s team is protecting people from threats the world doesn’t even know about.

She wants to stay because she fits here — because she has relevant skills and knowledge, because she’s able to help them do the world saving, because there are some people who believe she has value.

She wants to stay because _Coulson_ believes she has value. Because he’s a good man and it matters what he thinks of her. Because he believes in her skills but also in who she is, because he said she’s principled, because he believes she makes choices for the right reasons.

She wants to stay because maybe SHIELD is responsible for taking away the home she was supposed to have as a kid, and maybe now they’re giving her a new one.

So she puts it on.

But even then, she can’t just leave his office, can’t just walk out without talking about...them.

It turns out, she also wants to stay because she’s maybe falling a little bit in love with Phil Coulson, and she doesn’t even know when this thing — whatever this thing between them is — started to feel so big. Too big.

And she thinks he’ll understand everything — that that’s the kind of man he is. Even that she slept with Miles, which wasn’t about undying love or anything, but just how she and Miles connect, how she could show him easily that she’s still a good guy.

That SHIELD are actually good guys.

Of course, _that_ all blew up in her face.

She can hear Coulson approaching the door before he walks in a few minutes later, and the sound of his suit swishing across his body makes her ears tingle.

“Hi,” she whispers.

He doesn't answer her, but she can hear him swallow and then click the door closed behind him.

Instead of sitting back behind his desk, he sits in the couch behind her, and Skye takes it as an invitation.

He looks pretty much as close to tears as she feels, and she doesn't exactly understand why. Like, she's not stupid enough to think that she means nothing to him — she gets that whatever she feels between them, he feels it, too — but there's something so much deeper, so much sadder.

For the first time, it occurs to her that Coulson is _old_. Like, older than her but also older than his age.

He comes across so young, most of the time, it’s jarring to see him looking so old, so beaten down.

She seats herself next to him – close, but without touching – and turns towards him, one leg folded underneath.

He stares at her for too long – sad, old eyes with no trace of the humor and lightness that first drew her in.

“I _will_ help you,” he promises.

“I know.”

“I just...I wish you had told me.”

“I thought about it,” she answers, and she can feel more tears leak down her cheeks. “A lot.”

“Why didn’t you? Didn’t you trust me?”

“ _Yes_. But you’re not...you’re not just you. You’re also this SHIELD guy, right? You have to think about rules and regulations, and you might have to...break some. And maybe this way you wouldn’t have had to.”

“You were trying to protect me?”

She can’t quite read his expression — a little soft, a little amused.

“Wouldn’t you, if you were me?”

She can see him clench his jaw and then swallow, like he’s fighting for some kind of control.

“And when you found what you were looking for? Would you have —”

“I want to stay with you. With SHIELD.”

He nods.

“This, between us,” his finger draws a circle between her chest and his, “it wasn’t just about --”

“No,” she cuts him off, voice cracking with urgency. “How could you even think that?”

“I don't know what to think right now.”

“Don't give me that,” she scoffs. “Do you actually think I'm still hiding something?”

He closes his eyes and looks supremely, supremely pained. And that's when Skye sort of gets it. He's beating himself up for not thinking worse of her.

He’s been a bad spy, too. He’s trusted her when he knew better.

And _he_ was trained for it, at least.

“I'm on your side,” Skye promises him. She's careful, of course, because she promises to be on _his_ side, not SHIELD's, but she does it so she can mean it. Like one thousand percent mean it.

Coulson gets closer, and she closes her eyes in anticipation of his mouth on hers, only to be surprised by the tears that drip down her cheeks as soon as her lids shut. His hands frame her face, though, and his thumbs brush softly under her eyes.

“I know you are,” he promises her. “I know.”

When she leans in to kiss him, though, he holds her back with soft hands on either side of her face.

“Coulson?”

“We can't do this anymore.”

“Why not?”

Her voice breaks on the word, and Coulson leans forward to kiss her cheeks, his lips and fingertips sliding over tear tracks.

Skye pulls back, though, and tries to stop her tears.

“Is it because of today? Because —”

“No,” he cuts her off. “No, it’s not.”

“I only wanted to protect Miles because I thought he —”

Her breath hitches in her chest.

“He meant a lot to you.”

“We were there for each other when we had no one else, and I thought he… I thought he got it. We were going to change the world, together, you know?” She drags her fingers under her eyes. “You probably think that sounds naive.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “I don’t.”

And maybe it’s stupid, but she can’t look in his eyes and not think that maybe it’s supposed to be him — she’s supposed to change the world with _him_.

“Then why can’t we do this anymore?”

“We should have stopped already, when you decided you wanted to join SHIELD. But especially now...if you're serious...”

Skye's breath hitches again.

“There are rules,” he tells her.

“That's not fair.”

“I know,” he whispers, and then his lips cover hers, suddenly desperate. “I know, _Skye_.”

They don’t stop.

They don’t stop, but it doesn’t feel like they’re throwing caution into the wind, either.

It feels like a _last time_. It's slow and almost somber, like they're memorizing each other – every look and sigh and movement. And she's never had a last time like this before, where she knows that's what it is, but somehow she knows.

He’s more forward than he’s been the whole time they’ve been doing this, more forward but also more careful, so that when he rises from the couch with her, he whispers softly in her ear,

“I’m going to take you to my bed.”

“Yes,” she agrees, shivering at the promise of it.

He keeps his lips pressed to hers as he walks her backwards into the sleeping quarters, hands firm on her shoulders and back.

He presses her down on top of his blankets, his mouth fitted over hers in a deep, slow kiss, and he lets her disrobe him with more ease — less awkwardness — than has accompanied nudity before now.

She runs her hands down his chest, presses her fingers to his scar, and he doesn’t turn away his gaze when she does. Instead, he holds her eyes as she touches him, lets her look down at it without flinching away.

Then, Coulson takes control in a way he hasn’t done so far, stripping her bare with slow controlled movements and trailing his mouth over every inch of skin he uncovers.

His lips brush over the outside curve of her breast, so light it makes her shiver, makes her nipples pull tight and beg for attention. He kisses down her legs as he tugs off her jeans, all the way to her ankles, and then slides his mouth up to nip softly at the backs of her knees, so her legs drop open for him.

His tongue works a complicated pattern at the top of her inner thigh before he peels down her panties, and then he crawls back over her to suck a purple hickey just beneath her hip bone.

“Phil,” she groans his name, writhing underneath him.

And then he pushes his tongue inside of her.

Skye is practically delirious with lust by the time he’s made his way between her legs, ready to come apart under his tongue almost before he gets going. She comes easily, all panted moans and harsh breaths, but Coulson doesn’t stop.

In fact, once she’s come down a bit is when he seems to really begin. He sets up shop like this is his job, nestling between her knees and using his fingers to open her up to his explorations.

She tries to clutch at the back of his head, working her fingers through his short hair, unsure of whether she’s pressing him to keep going or just seeking the connection. Either way, she clutches at him, her whole body active and moving underneath him

He leaves her shaking and _begging_ , with his tongue on her clit and his fingers inside of her, begging for him to stop and not stop, to give her more and keep giving her exactly the same.

Skye silences herself with her forearm over her mouth, teeth sunk slightly into the skin, as he drives her over the edge until she’s almost screaming.

She’s sweating when he finally pulls back, her whole body damp and flushed, and when he kisses her it’s with lips that that are slick with her arousal, with the taste of her passed between them, and his body sliding against her slick skin.

“Please,” she whispers against his mouth, and he nods, fumbles towards his nightstand for a condom that she plucks from his fingers as he holds himself above her.

Before she puts it on him, though, she runs her hand down his chest to explore the length of him, watching his face as she draws her fingers from the head of his cock to his balls. He shivers above her, lips slightly parted in obvious arousal, but his eyes are still so _sad_.

Their eyes hold as she pumps her hand over him a few times, and Coulson’s eyes slip shut as he leans down to kiss her, hard. It’s not until he pulls back, a rough gasp of her name between them, that she backs off.

Skye tears open the condom and rolls it down Coulson’s length, squeezing her fingers around him one last time before she draws him down over her, so his body completely covers hers, so his mouth covers hers.

She’s the one who draws him to enter her, her legs wrapped around his waist, and he follows her lead to push all the way inside.

Their lips part when she gasps at a deep thrust, at Coulson fully inside of her, but before he can back off, she tightens her legs around him, ankles crossed at his lower back.

His eyes meet hers as he grinds his hips forward and down, the start of a slow rhythm that builds inside of her, and he drops his forehead down to rest against hers.

“Skye,” he whispers her name, lips poised just above hers, and her mouth falls open. She throws her head backwards in a silent gasp when he hits just the right angle, and she can feel him smile against her neck as he holds himself there, making short, deep thrusts right where she needs it.

It’s heat shooting down her arms and legs, making her fingertips tingle, and she’s clenching around him — coming around him — almost too quickly. She exhales, shuddering quiet breaths, as Coulson stills himself above her. Through half-slitted eyes, she can see him clenching his jaw, holding himself back.

It’s really hot — the vision of Coulson trying to control himself — the kind of thing that makes her want to test him, that makes her want to make him lose control. Once she’s recovered a little bit, she rolls them so she perches on top, her right hand resting over the scar on his chest.

Coulson groans from his new position on his back looking up at her, and grips her hips tightly as she starts to rock. He can’t keep his eyes open, though, keeps fluttering his eyelids shut with every movement.

“Look at me, Coulson,” she requests, changing her movements from rocking to a slight lift and drop that makes him groan and flutter even more.

“Yes,” he agrees, more of a grunt, as he clearly strains to keep his eyes open. His palms run up her torso to cup her breasts, thumbs against her sternum.

She can’t help but clench tightly around him, can’t help but move faster in an attempt to see him lose control, but Coulson’s hands pull her down, force her to slow her movements.

“Slow,” he requests, sad eyes and somber voice, and Skye nods, slows her pace, hips sliding over his.

It’s unclear to her how long they last, just that it doesn’t feel like long enough, with his hands on her and his blue eyes skating down her body and his cock hard inside of her. They come together, though, her hips stuttering over his, his hands grasping at her almost too hard, as she collapses down to kiss him again.

After, he rolls her back underneath him and buries his head in her shoulder, clutches at her through heaving breaths, and she wonders if she could push things. If she could just kiss him again, if she could just refuse to follow his stupid rules...

She won’t, though. She won’t do anything to jeopardize him or to make his life harder, not when he’s already done so much for her, not when he’s going to do so much more for her, not when it’s about _this_ , about something so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

She won’t put him in a position where he has to choose between her and SHIELD.

So she just combs her fingers through his hair and holds onto him for a little longer.

When he kisses her goodbye at his door, it’s just that — it’s _goodbye_ , not _goodnight_ , and he does it with red-rimmed eyes that make him seem so small and vulnerable, like someone she needs to protect.

And anyways, he’s already offering her so much, it would be greedy to ask for this, too.

  
  



	6. feel it on me love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Future season 3

They’ve won.

It’s cost them, cost them more than they were prepared to pay, but it’s a victory.

Even though it feels hollow.

Which is probably why they’re wallowing a little more than celebrating, the two of them alone in what’s left of the base while everyone else has taken off for another location.

It feels like the first time she’s caught her breath since she transformed, or since Coulson was carving symbols on the walls, or since SHIELD fell to Hydra. Basically, the first time she’s been able to breathe for as long as she can remember.

And, well, it makes her think. And it maybe it makes her willing to talk in a way she hasn’t dared to before now, makes her willing to risk things she hasn’t been willing to risk.

Once, she’d thought it would be greedy to ask for him to give her everything. Now, though… Now it feels like something she deserves, something she should have if she wants it — if _he_ wants it.

“Did you mean what you said about...about how it’s easy for you to keep people out? Not to let things get too personal?”

She’s been wondering, ever since Rosalind came into their lives.

She’s been thinking about things that she’s trained herself to never ever think about, and right now — now when she’s not even sure there will be a SHIELD tomorrow — now seems like a time she can finally bring it up.

“Yes,” he answers with a shrug.

“Because if you’ve done this for a long time, then even sex is just...part of the game?”

His eyes lock with hers over his glass of whiskey, over his empty desk in his trashed office, and he shakes his head.

Like he knows what she’s asking even though they never ever bring it up.

“No. Not...not always.”

“So what was it, when it was the two of us?”

She watches him close his eyes, looking supremely pained. They’ve never even acknowledged it, not once in the last years.

“There was never anything about that that was a game to me.”

It calms her a little bit to hear it.

“I imagined you were hiding things from me,” he continues. “But I felt like I knew you, like even if there was something big, it wasn’t bad.”

“And it wasn’t, right?”

“No,” he agrees. “No, it wasn’t bad.”

“It was never a game for me, either, you know.”

“I do.”

She licks her lips, searching for exactly what she means to say because the fact is that she’s done with playing games about this, done with metaphors and looks that take the place of honesty.

“I was jealous,” she offers. “Of you and Rosalind. I didn’t trust her, but I was also…”

“There was nothing to be jealous of.”

“She got to have sex with you,” Daisy points out.

“And that’s enough to inspire jealousy?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realize I was quite that good,” he jokes, like he’s being purposefully obtuse.

“Why are you pretending you don’t get what I’m saying right now?”

He’s silent — she knows it must be shocking to him, her willingness to bring this up now.

“Because what you’re saying is dangerous.”

“Against the rules?”

“No, not anymore. It hasn’t been against the rules for some time.”

That brings her up short.

“When you took over…”

“Yes,” he nods.

“So all this time, we could have been…” He doesn’t answer, keeps his gaze down on the giant singed spot on his desk where some sort of flash bomb landed. Everything on the desk had broken, but the wood itself is sturdy, just marked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how you felt and I didn’t want to make you feel like…”

“You’ve never coerced me into anything, you know that.”

He nods once, and she wonders if he’s had to convince himself of that before.

“So,” she licks her lips, “nothing happened because you never said anything.”

“If you had pushed things, even back before, I wouldn’t have said no.”

“I’d never want to put you in that position,” she counters.

He nods, like he knows this, and she wonders if he’s thought about this a lot — maybe more than she has. Suddenly it seems obvious, when she thinks back to him last year, to his face and the way he looked at her.

“I kept telling myself we’d talk about it when there was time.” But there’s never been any time; they both know that. “And I never knew how to say it, how to make it clear, without making it seem like I was...propositioning you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded being propositioned. By you.”

He almost-smiles into his whiskey.

“Phil, if it’s not about the rules, then why would it be dangerous?”

He takes a long sip, like he’s thinking through something serious, and then pull his lips back from his glass and licks them. She doesn’t think he’s being purposeful about it, but she can’t help but watch the way his tongue laps against his lower lip.

“Before she left, Rosalind told me that I’m emotionless. That I have no heart. That I can’t let people in.” He says it like he believes it.

“Yeah, okay,” she narrows her eyes at him, all disbelief. “An alternate reading is maybe that you didn’t let _her_ in because she was lying to you and had intel that you knew probably came from Hydra. Which, you know, _it did_.”

He smiles slightly, a sad smile, as though the truth of what she’s said means nothing.

“She still wasn’t wrong,” is all he offers.

“ _Emotionless_ doesn’t fit with the Phil Coulson I know. Like, at all,” she tells him with a shrug. “Yeah, you’ve been pretty...uncommunicative...lately. But I know you.”

And it’s strange how she knows him, how she feels closer to him than anyone, but there’s been this boundary between them, this wall between them. Like they’ve both always known what would happen if they got _too_ close.

“It was always different with you,” he acknowledges.

“And that’s dangerous,” like she finally understands.

“Spies are supposed to have trust issues. It comes with the game. And between us, even when I should never have trusted you…”

“Has it occurred to you that trusting people is actually your default setting, and you’re just blowing things out of proportion, here?”

“How do you figure that?”

“Coulson, I love you, but you literally assembled a spy team full of people who betrayed you.”

“You included.”

“Yes, me included.”

“But they’re all people who were working for a good cause, for the right reasons.”

“And you trust them. With your life.”

“That’s not personal.”

“I beg to differ. What we have with each other...it’s personal. That’s why Lincoln couldn’t handle it here, you know. He said it was like we were living on top of each other, and he didn’t mean it physically. It’s... _personal_.”

“Not for me.”

“Okay.”

She thinks he’s lost somewhere in his head, but maybe that’s okay, for Coulson to be sad and and a little self-pitying, for Coulson to tell himself that things aren’t personal when they are. Maybe he doesn’t do enough self-pitying, always trying to be strong for everyone else, always trying to support everyone else.

“So what’s the danger for us, then,” she asks after a long quiet moment of sipping whiskey. “Is it that you’ll open up and it will hurt, or that you’re not able to open up anymore?”

“Daisy…” It’s a warning tone, but she’s not listening, has no intention of letting up on this just because it makes him uncomfortable.

“Because I’m tired of this, Coulson. I’m not going to do it anymore.”

That brings him up short.

“Do what?”

“Pretend? Don’t you…” She traces a figure eight around her knee and then looks back up at him under her eyelashes. “Don’t you get _tired_?”

She watches as he forces a dry swallow.

“Yes.”

It surprises her, if she’s honest. She hadn’t expected it to be so easy.

In all this time, she’d never imagined it could be easy.

She sets down her glass on the desk and stands up, circles around to the back of his desk, and then stands there — a little bit uncertain when he looks more nervous than pleased.

“I’m not sure I _can_ anymore,” he finally answers.

“Not sure you can what?”

“Feel?” He clenches his left hand — the robotic one — on the arm of his chair.

Daisy reaches forward and touches it, her fingers soft over his, over the robotic ones.

“You can’t feel that, can you?”

“No,” he answers, though he seems to be enraptured with the sight of her hand on his, with the way she drags her fingers up over his sleeve until she can feel the edge of metal through the thin layer of cotton.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not so much right now,” he breathes, eyes locked down on where she’s touching it, a soft touch like she’d give to any other part of him.

While he’s got his guard down, she drops into his lap, as close as she’s been to him in nearly three years. He tenses at first, but as she settles, so does he, relaxing underneath her, between her thighs.

“Do you know why I decided I should stay with SHIELD?”

“No,” he answers, quiet voice as he looks up at her.

“It was you.”

“Because we —”

“No.”

She smiles at him, moves both hands up to cup his cheeks.

“It was because you gave Mike Peterson and Akela Amador a chance. It was because you believed in people.”

“Because I was an idealist.”

“You still are,” she tells him. “You’re still that guy.”

“That guy wouldn’t have tried to make a deal with the ATCU.”

“Yes, that guy _would have_ . _That guy_ would have wanted to save as many people as he could. _That guy_ would have wanted to see the good in Rosalind Price.”

He closes his eyes and sucks in a deep, slow breath.

“I wondered, for a little while, if being with her could mean something, like it did with you.”

“She’s much more your type,” Daisy suggests, suddenly awkward in her position, sitting like she is while pointing out that he could never really want a relationship with _her_.

“My type?”

“Sophisticated. Skirts and suits and…”

She shrugs, unable to name the things that she imagines go into making a woman Phil Coulson’s _type_. Pretty much a lot of things that are the opposite of her, though.

“Is that my type?”

“More than I am.” She looks down at her black t-shirt. “That’s why you thought it could mean something, didn’t you?”

“No,” he answers, shaking his head. “No, if I thought she was my type it was because I wanted to believe she was better than she seemed. That she had principles and a human side.”

“And it turned out she did.”

“I suppose so.”

“But you didn’t feel anything for her.”

“Not like…” He swallows and turns his eyes down. “I’m not sure I can feel things like that anymore.”

“Like what?”

He can’t seem to find an answer, but meets her eyes, and his are so sad and blue and _old_ , older than he is.

So Daisy kisses him, soft press of lips against his, until he gasps against her mouth.

For a moment, he’s too still — too completely still — and then his hands land on her hips as she leaves more tiny, soft kisses against his lips.

“I love you, you know,” she tells him, almost conversational between soft presses of her lips against his.

He makes a noise at that — part moan, part sigh — and tightens his hands on her hips.

“I never fell in love with someone after we broke up before,” Daisy whispers.

“Is that what we did? Broke up?”

“Do you have a better word?”

Coulson shakes his head

“I was in love with you _before_ we broke up,” he whispers, and then his lips get harder, more demanding against hers.

“And now?”

Coulson’s answer is just a smile, and then his right hand around the back of her neck, anchoring her lips to his.

They kiss desperately, hot and _messy_ as Daisy rocks over his lap, until Coulson’s hands smooth down the front of her shirt — suddenly tentative.

“Can I —”

“ _Yes_ ,” she answers before he’s even asked, and he tears her t-shirt over her head. He’s more clumsy with her bra, with the fingers of his robotic hand, but he gets it off of her as her fingers race down the line of buttons from his open collar.

She gives up when she gets down to his belly, down to where the shirt disappears into his jeans, when Coulson leans forward and nips at the side of her neck under her ear.

The feel of his mouth on her makes her whole lower body clench, almost painfully, and she tries to grind down against him, but can’t work up enough friction in this chair.

“God, Phil,” she grunts against the top of his head, his lips pressed low on her throat as he covers her neck with kisses and soft bites. “I need —”

She doesn’t know exactly what she needs, but that doesn’t stop Coulson from picking her up and standing just enough to place her on the edge of his desk. They work together to strip her jeans down her legs, and he works them all the way off along with her boots, leaving her naked on top of his desk.

Once she’s nude, though, he collapses back into his chair and draws in a slow breath. She feels exposed, a little awkward, but kind of sexy posed on his desk as he looks up at her in awe.

“I’ve had this fantasy,” he tells her, “a few hundred times.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nods and pushes her knees apart as he tugs her to the very edge of the table.

Coulson leans down and forward to press his mouth against her upper thigh, and she can almost feel him shaking with self-restraint, with the urge to build this up for her a little bit. She groans when she feels his breath wash over her clit before he presses his tongue against her.

The truth is, she’s had fantasies about this, too — more than she should have — but the the memories, the fantasies, the dreams she’s been clinging to are nothing compared to the feeling of his mouth on her.

He alternates between a firm lick and a light flutter that makes her writhe against him, and she tries to buck her hips up towards him.

“ _God_ , Phil,” she whispers, her voice strained from arousal.

“Uh huh,” he murmurs against her skin, moaning himself when he pushes his tongue inside of her, when he wraps his arms around her upper thighs to hold her open against his mouth.

She leans backwards to sprawl herself across the desk, but is startled by the feel of her whiskey glass at her back before it slides off the desk and shatters on the floor.

“Shit.”

“Leave it,” Coulson grunts and pulls her further towards him, sucking at her clit until she collapses backwards, her head almost hanging off the edge of the desk.

Daisy reaches down and scratches her fingers through his hair, holding him in place, and he moans again — a solid vibration against her clit that leaves her shivering and clutching at his head.

Before she comes, though, he backs off his touch and nuzzles at the junction of her thigh, so that she’s left grinding her hips up on the desk.

“Coulson,” she breathes his name. “Coulson, please.”

He moans when he pushes his tongue back against her, but he keeps teasing her, keeps pulling back and then forcing her higher until she comes explosively, thighs closed around his head and her whole body arched up off the desk.

When she finally lets him go, Coulson barely pulls back except to look up at her with an expression of satisfaction. Daisy has to grin and drop her head back to breathe, while he turns his face to nuzzle against her inner thigh.

“I forgot how gorgeous you are like this,” he whispers.

Daisy laughs, a short dismissive sound, but Coulson proceeds to kiss a slow path up her thigh to nuzzle against the lower part of her belly and then up to the remnant of the gunshot scars, where he pauses before reaching his lips up to her breasts.

It only takes her a few minutes of him teasing to gather herself, to be ready for more, and she draws him up out of his chair so she can get his pants off. He kisses her breathlessly as she works his slacks down his legs, his shirt open on his chest so she can run her fingers down the scar in the center of his chest.

He follows her direction easily, kicking off his jeans and climbing up on to the desk over her, though he pauses when she draws him towards her with her legs around his waist.

“We could go find a bed,” he murmurs against her lips, but she just pulls him further forward.

“Maybe for round two,” she suggests, and Coulson laughs against her mouth.

“You might be getting too ambitious.”

He’s smirking, though, pleased with her ambitious planning.

“No,” she pulls him harder against her mouth, “I’m definitely not.”

Coulson seems to catch himself right as his cock is brushing against her entrance and Daisy is going wild with the need.

“Do I need to get —”

“No,” she answers. “Unless you —”

“No.”

His forehead drops onto her shoulder when he pushes inside of her, and he groans so desperately. She exhales a silent moan at the feeling of him inside of her after so long without it, after too many years of celibacy.

“Fuck, Daisy. I…”

Coulson pulls out, leaving her feeling like they’ve stopped before they’ve even started, and then drops his head back to her shoulder, breathing in deep, shuddering breaths. Daisy drags her fingernails down his back, over his open shirt.

“You okay?” She whispers against the side of his head.

“Yeah,” he answers, though he somehow burrows more into her neck, and when he breathes again, his whole body quivers.

“Phil?”

“This isn’t going to last very long,” he sounds embarrassed.

“Luckily, we can improve in round two,” she offers, trying to calm him down.

“Yeah,” he exhales slowly and then pushes his cock back inside of her, making her groan at the sensation. Once he’s all the way inside, positioned a little higher up on his knees for a better angle, she drops her hand down between them to touch her clit.

“I’m going to…” She licks her lips. “I’ve never tried this with someone else before. I don’t know how it will feel to you.”

“You’ve never tried —”

His incredulous question is cut off when she pulses the air above her clit, creating tiny vibrations that make her shiver around him.

“Fuck, Daisy. That’s so fucking…”

He loses it completely, thrusting wildly as she masturbates, and his eyes hold hers the whole time. She loves the way he looks at her, like he’s amazed by everything about her, like he’d never for one minute consider her powers anything but a gift.

And she doesn’t think about Lincoln — she _aggressively_ doesn’t think about Lincoln — and how even though they never got this far, he made her feel so damaged, so broken. Like someone unclean, or someone with a disease that needs curing.

As though he can tell her mind has wandered, Coulson grasps her thighs and changes the angle slightly, so that she grunts every time he thrusts inside of her, so that every movement he makes builds the heat in her belly even higher.

She manages to come first, and when Coulson lets himself go at the same moment, it’s like he explodes with a loud shout before he collapses on top of her.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles against her shoulder, but Daisy cuts him off by pulling his mouth against hers.

He kisses her for a long time, deep slow kisses that make her lose track of time, and then drops his head back to her shoulder, still breathing too deeply, still shuddering slightly each time. It takes her a few minutes to realize that her shoulder is wet, that the shuddering breaths are actually quiet sobs.

“Phil?”

“Hmm?”

He doesn’t remove his face from where he’s pressed it under her ear, but he kisses her there, slow and a little bit wet on her neck

“Are you…”

“I’m fine. I’m...happy,” he promises her, kisses her there again and again, a soft scrape of teeth and a little suction, and she wonders if she’s going to have a hickey.

When he finally pulls back, his blue eyes are rimmed slightly with red, and she almost wants to make a dig at _emotionless Phil Coulson_ who is crying on her shoulder after sex.

She doesn’t, of course.

She doesn’t want to shame him or make him feel bad, just wants him to remember that he has a heart, that he has emotions. But he smiles when she cups his face in her hands and strokes her thumbs under his eyes, and she thinks he knows.

“Let’s go find a bed that hasn’t been destroyed,” she suggests.

“It’s too soon for round two,” he tells her, something sheepish and maybe ashamed on his face, like he thinks he should be able to go again at her command.

“I know,” Daisy laughs and sits them up. “I was thinking we could both handle a nap, though.”

He smiles at that, and his right hand squeezes her shoulder.

“God, I missed sleeping with you in my bed.”

“Me, too. That was always my favorite part.”

“Your favorite?” He asks it like he’s not sure whether to be offended or not, that she might prefer the cuddling to the sex.

“Let me show you,” she answers, slipping off the desk and gathering her clothes. He follows suit, and they wind up in his room, which had been untouched by the damage to the base.

She curls around him in his bed, naked skin to naked skin, and Coulson groans as he cuddles back against her. And it’s still the best feeling, like she has his back and he has hers, like she’s precious to him.


End file.
